Friday, 6 July 2012

5,4,3,2,1...Blast Off!!

Goodness! What a month!

Let me tell you, trying to get a game out is no walk in the park. Even when a game is completed, you got tons to think about including responding quickly to community feedback. Phew! Pass me the Red Bull please!

One of the many challenges of being a Malaysian game developer is attending to an online community that is separated by a twelve hour time zone (a shout out to our fans in the USA, You Rock!). That means a major clash in operating hours. Fortunately, our leader and Hoodwink executive producer Amir Irwan is fuelled by caffeine and a micro nuclear reactor. I think the man had a total of 8 hours of sleep during the launch week and then a couple more the following days after.

He was constantly juggling between providing support, replying media inquiries and carrying out his producer responsibilities until the wee hours of the morning.

(left to right) Eko, Amir, Chris
Eko: Amir! Get some sleep man!
Chris: Yes Amir, how are you supposed to pick up super models looking like that?

Well Amir, for your dedication, I award you the "Soft Pillow" Award. Go count some sheep!

However our boss wasn't the only one slogging away. Everyone in the studio was in "overclock" mode. If we had an office boy, that chap would have been making copies and handing them out like he was gunning for the 2012 Office Olympics Gold medal in memo distribution.

"Johnson! I want a copy of this memo and I wanted it yesterday!"

"But we're a paperless company sir!"

"Then why on earth do we have an office boy???"

Did that bad attempt at humour give you an idea of how things were in the studio?

No? Well that's going to have to do because I'm fresh out of ideas.

The programming team was busy ironing out bugs while design helped build marketing material and so did the artists. We even worked late but that wasn't a bad thing because we ordered pizza for dinner and had a few laughs together.

We were all anxious but we still had other things to work on before the game was officially released on the 29th of June. We even organised a press conference on the 29th to break the news to local media.

OM NOM NOM NOM

I was tasked with handling this..er..task. I sent out media invites to many news agencies and expected around 20 journalists to turn up. Such was my confidence in my PR prowess!

But only 8 people showed up!

I grabbed an attending journalist by the throat and demanded he tell me where the others were hiding.

"Most of the IT journalist are here, but many lifestyle reporters had gone to a special screening of The Amazing Spider-man" he cried.

Things are still a bit hectic in the office. We have been monitoring feedback for Hoodwink and working on patches to improve the game. The patches can be found here: http://hoodwinkgame.com/index.php/support

If you have Hoodwink and want to give us your feedback, please avoid posting them in this blog. Instead please email them to support@hoodwinkgame.com

So even though we're busy, please keep dropping by. There's still plenty interesting things happening here and am keen to share. Until next time!